Botan Rice Candy is a delicious and mysterious treat. The yummy chewy orangey-flavored candy is a product of Japan, but I’ve only ever seen it Asian food stores in the US, and never in Japan. Also, the inside wrapper (but not the outside!) is made of rice and edible.
But my favorite thing about Botan Rice Candy has always been the funny sticker that is a free prize in each box. In the past, I’ve usually gotten an illustration of something generically charming, like an athlete of some kind or an animal. (See the examples printed on the box.) Lame, yes, but in a cute way.
I’m extremely disappointed in the sticker prizes I received today in my two boxes of Botan Rice Candy from the Sunrise Market in Soho.
????
I am at a loss as to what to do with these stickers. My husband thinks they’re awesome, of course. Anyway, Merry Christmas!
i alwasys used to get those when i lived in sf they’re so damn tasty my piano teacher when i did a good job would give me a box or two i think last year it was i got a box and it had a really cool robot sticker but those are odd they’re cute but not normal for what you usually expect
They used to come with little plastic toys in them – the boxes were made longer by about the size of one piece of the candy to fit the prize. Friends used to bring them back from Japan for me in the 1960s, and I LOVED those prizes! The stickers were kind of a let down for me when they started them, but by then I was an adult, and the candy was my main reason for buying it. Yummmmmy.
yep. I only buy candies/toys/etc when there’s bonus sticker in the packages. Don’t know why but I just love getting them? For what? Beats me. I like to stare at them.
lol. i can see how your husband loves these stickers! It’s classic vintage comic book sound effects!! *kapow!*
I usually use stickers like that to seal the backs of envelopes. Seeing stickers of any kind always makes me feel like a kid again with the sticker albums full of glittery and puffy stickers.
Like Adlpated commented above, I remember those plastic toys – and I also experienced the same disappointment when they switched to stickers, LOL! They still had toys in the 70s, maybe even the early 80s. I guess this dates me a bit, but I also remember when Cracker Jack boxes had real toys in them. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be…
My kids and I love that candy. We don’t get stickers though. We get temporary tattoos, which are awesome!
Like June and Adlpated before me, I remember the toys with fondness (even if the wheels *always* fell off the truck as soon as you took it out of the box!) Are we dating ourselves? :) As a kid in Hawaii, I always thought it was a local treat. Imagine my surprise and dismay when my own daughter came back from a trip to her g-parents and the boxes had TEMPORARY TATTOOS!!! The nerve. :) Still love the candy, tho.